Welcome to Laser Cartridge Plus, where our customers have become accustomed to having the highest quality bank certified MICR Toner Cartridges delivered to them on-time and trouble free since 1995. Laser Cartridge Plus has the lowest defective cartridge rates in the industry and have customers in every trade all over the world who rely on our quality MICR Cartridges to print their checks everyday without bank rejections. Our customers demand only the most reliable MICR cartridges available in the market today and we pride ourselves on the fact that our MICR is made in the USA. After years of research and many testing methods, we have brought only the best methods forward in current times for our customers with security features that make us the most trusted name in the business when it comes to MICR Toner.
MICR is an acronym, and it stands for Magnetic Ink Character Recognition. It is most commonly used in the routing and bank account numbers on the bottom of deposit slips and business checks. However, this outdated acronym makes it confusing for the consumer, as almost all MICR on the market today is not actually ink anymore, it is toner. (Today, ink is a liquid, and toner is a powder). Several years ago, when checks were normally printed on large scale commercial printing presses, they were indeed made with a MICR Ink or paste, which is kind of a shoe polish consistency. But as time and technology progressed, just about everyone has transitioned over to laser printers in their office and now uses a MICR Toner to create the routing numbers and account numbers on the bottom of their checks. By producing company checks in-house it eliminates the need to re-print company checks when company information or banking information changes, but one of the biggest advantages is the fact that by printing company checks in-house it minimizes the exposure of account information and security paper outside of the company keeping fraud to a minimum. Laser Cartridge Plus has MICR Toner that is made for the specific model of laser printer the consumer is using. The most commonly used type of laser printer for MICR now is the HP LaserJet Printers that are monochrome (only prints black, and not color). This method provides the very best quality and most reliable, consistent magnetic readings for the automated check readers at all banks. Laser Cartridge Plus provides batch testing of all cartridges to ensure that the signal strength of the toner is optimum for the bank readers, thus reducing bank rejections before they happen.
As previously mentioned, MICR Toner is a powder based product. It contains the mineral Iron Oxide, which allows the toner to give off a magnetic signal when passed through the automated bank readers. Bank readers will read and record the routing and account numbers off of the bottom of the checks and then sort the checks for payment and processing. The Iron Oxide in MICR is very hard and course making it virtually impossible to utilize using ink, which is a liquid. That is why we recommend sticking with a laser printer that takes the toner (powder) cartridges instead of an inkjet printer that uses liquid inks. The Iron Oxide will not blend with the ink very well and tends to be course, because of this the Iron Oxide particles settle in the bottom of the ink cartridge, and tend to clog the nozzles of the printhead, causing white lines to develop as a result in the important MICR numbers it was made to produce. When this occurs the routing and banking numbers will give off a low signal or no signal and the checks will be rejected by the bank and a service fee can be assessed to the issuer.
The simple answer is No, not if you want reliable, automated check readings at the bank (which you can be charged $30 per check by the bank for manually entered checks). A lot of customers want to create a colorful check, but the truth of the matter is that the security blank check paper can be ordered with a variety of colors. You can print your logo with a color laser printer but when you go to print the account and bank routing numbers at the bottom of the check you need to use a monochrome printer with the proper toner cartridge.
A more detailed answer is, HP Color LaserJet Printers use a chemical (polymer) based toner. This synthetic toner was developed in labs to create a very fine particle to blend the colors together for an even, smooth blend of colors to create a huge amount of various colors including metallic colors. HP Color LaserJet printers take four toner cartridges, black, cyan, magenta, and yellow and do not contain any Iron Oxide. Traditional monochrome printers use cartridges that contain a small amount of Iron Oxide and utilizes a magnetic roller inside the cartridge to distribute an even mixture of toner for printing. The color cartridges don't contain Iron Oxide and don't utilize a magnetic roller instead utilize a foam roller for even distribution of toner.
To create a good signal strength for the bank check readers a toner was developed that increased the mixture of Iron Oxide to give a higher magnetic signal. If a cartridge doesn't utilize a magnetic roller then it can't utilize Iron Oxide thus there is no MICR Toner available.
